Pan Francese #4 Wooo hooo I made sour dough

First a thankyou to Farinam for your help with the starter that smelt like nail polish remover. I ended up just leaving the lid off it and now it seems fine, so thank you

Today I baked Pan Francese #4 as a bit of a test for my starter and it passed with flying colours, not quite as crusty as i like it, my cooking times were a bit out because I split one lot of dough into 2 loafs, then I couldn't get them both on one pizza stone so one was in the top of the oven and one in the bottom.

Anyway thank you to those that helped me with advise through the last week or so.

I am now ready to put my starter in the fridge. Should I feed it and put it into the fridge or wait until it peaks, or not feed it and throw it in the fridge?

The up side to the first starter going all weird is that I made a second as a backup and to be honest it is doing better than the first, the second one is a white/wholemeal starter. I will keep feeding it and maybe get some loafs out of it to make a comparison. Can I freeze it for a rainy day?

My usual technique is to take half the weight that I need for a levain for a loaf out of the stock and double that up (90g plus 45/45 for the Pane francesa recipe). I then add 45/45 to the stock and put it straight into the fridge. Some advocate leaving it out to get working etc but I figure that mostly the fridge only slows things down and giving it time at room temperature only uses up food supply and potentially shortens the time for the culture to maintain some activity before going dormant for lack of food. I have left it in the fridge for a month while on holidays and basically only need a feed or two to be back at full tilt.

Freezing is certainly an option and is a good security measure if you wanted to avoid having to go through the rigmarole of starting from scratch. I haven't heard of any limitations on time that it can be kept successfully this way. Spreading some out as a thin layer, frying and storing the flakes is another method for preserving that has been used successfully. However, given the general ease of making another one wonders whether to bother too much. Yes you do need to go without hoomemade sourdough for a week or two or you can beg some from another baker.